Eikon

Polydorus of Cyprus

The Holy New-Martyr Polydorus of Nicosia in Cyprus

New Martyr · Martyr · b. Nicosia, Cyprus — d. 3 September 1794, at New Ephesus

Commemorated 3 September — New-martyrdom by hanging at New Ephesus, after repentance from apostasy

Polydorus (†1794), a merchant's son of Nicosia, is one of the new-martyrs of the Ottoman world whose crown was won out of a fall: drawn into drink and bad company in the Levant trade, he denied Christ in an hour of weakness — and could not live with it. The pattern of the new-martyrs' repentance carried him from confessor to confessor until, resolved to wash the denial in blood, he presented himself at New Ephesus (Kuşadası) before the Turkish judge, confessed Christ, and revoked his apostasy. Neither promises nor tortures moved him, and he was hanged on 3 September 1794, the Church receiving him at once among the new-martyrs.

Polydorus was born at Nicosia in Cyprus, of a family in trade, and followed the commerce of the Levant — Egypt and the Anatolian coast — where a young Greek's faith wore the double strain of the age: the tavern and the renegade's easy advancement. In company he could not master, and in drink, he spoke the words of denial. The waking was the beginning of his sanctity: he could not bear what he had done, and the sources describe the wandering of the repentant apostate — confession, penance, the counsel of spiritual men — that in the world of the new-martyrs so often ended one way. Against counsel to be content with hidden repentance, he sought the harder path the Kollyvadic fathers of the age both feared and revered: to confess Christ publicly where he had denied him.

At New Ephesus on the Anatolian coast opposite Samos, he stood before the judge, declared himself a Christian who had fallen, and revoked his apostasy. The court tried the usual sequence — the honours of a returning convert, then imprisonment and torture. He held; and on 3 September 1794 he was hanged. The Christians ransomed the body, and his memory entered the Greek calendars at once, among the company of the new-martyrs of the Turkish yoke whose repentance the Church holds equal to a first innocence.

Feast and commemoration

September 3 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 16) — the day of his martyrdom. He falls under the common of a martyr (see references/common-readings.md).

Iconography

Polydorus is depicted in the manner of the new-martyrs of the Ottoman period: a young man in the island dress of his century, holding the cross of martyrdom, sometimes with the noose of his hanging shown; in composite icons he stands among the new-martyrs of Cyprus. No pre-1900 image identified to him has been located; the entry is listed among the wanted icons.

Sources

  1. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Neon Martyrologion — the account of the new-martyr Polydorus of Nicosia: the fall in the Levant trade, the repentance, the voluntary confession at New Ephesus, and the hanging of 3 September 1794. (The classical public-domain witness for the new-martyrs of this period.)
  2. The Great Synaxaristes of the Orthodox Church, September 3 — the received Greek account.
  3. Orthodox Church in America, Lives of the Saints, September 3 — "Martyr Polydorus of Cyprus" (consulted live; the OCA page confirms the day and title but carries no biography, and the account above rests on the Greek witnesses).